Whose voyage brought Europe into contact with the Americas?

In 1492, the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus, sailing for Spain, crossed the Atlantic and reached islands in the Caribbean, believing he had found a westward route to Asia. Though he was not the first to reach the Americas — Norse sailors arrived centuries earlier, and Indigenous peoples had lived there for millennia — his voyages began sustained contact between Europe and the Americas. This encounter reshaped both worlds through trade, colonisation, and the vast exchange of crops, animals, and diseases.